Counting our Chickens

Hello there, little chicken! You’re awfully cute! Would you like to come live at our house? Oh wait – you can’t. Here in our city, they have a silly ordinance that prevents us from having chickens. They aren’t banned completely, but chicken owners are required to keep them at least 150 feet from property lines. Since our property is not near 300 feet wide and long, we are without chickens. That’s sad! Since we are without chickens, my husband’s friend from work said I could use pictures of his chickens for my blog.

The person who owns these chickens said that this little brown one is his favorite. It follows him around the yard like a little pet whenever he goes out there. It is a bantam chicken, as are all of his chickens. Bantams are smaller than standard sized chickens. Their eggs are smaller as well, but they are just as tasty! We would like some little bantam chickens of our own, to cavort around the back yard and amuse us and give us tasty fresh eggs. I don’t think that’s too much to ask! It’s not like we want to fill up the back yard – We just want a few little chickens.

And look at the little baby chickens! Aren’t they cute? Mama chicken is like “What you lookin’ at?” Of course, we wouldn’t be having any baby chickens, because we just want hens. No roosters here, since they’re so noisy and all. I don’t think the neighbors would appreciate a new and unrequested early morning rooster alarm. I wouldn’t appreciate that either. My husband asked his friend what he was going to do with the baby chickens and he said “Those are your chickens.” But we aren’t allowed to have them! No fair!

Some of the chickens have funny heads. They have these big puffs of feathers on the tops of their heads. I don’t know what they’re called, but I’d love for some of them to live in our back yard. Check them out, and check out the feathers on the feet of the white one here.

We’ve been wanting some chickens for a while now. We talk about it all the time. We have big dreams of building a chicken tractor and bringing in some fun little hens to live in it. We’d call them “The Girls”. What? You don’t know what a chicken tractor is? Well, I’ll tell you! It’s a movable chicken enclosure. You can put it in a different place in the yard every day if you want to. It has mesh sides and tops to keep the chickens inside, but the chickens are still able to enjoy the benefits of playing around in the yard. It also keeps the chickens safe from predators while they are frolicking around in the yard. Some chicken tractors even have the coop attached, so if the chickens get tired of the yard during the day, they can go inside and hang out. That is the kind of chicken tractor we would have if we could have chickens. With the coop attached. It would be the ultimate chicken mansion! Unfortunately, we aren’t allowed to have chickens, so I have no chicken tractor to show you. However, I do have some more pictures of chickens for you to enjoy!

We were talking about the chickens one day last week and my husband decided to write a letter to the mayor and the city council and request a change to what we are now calling the “Chicken Ordinance”. Really, the worst they could do is say no, so it’s worth a try, right? So he sent the letter and we waited. Then he said “Hey, there’s a city council meeting coming up!” There is a part at the beginning of each meeting where citizens can address the council about any issue they would like. If their issue is not on the agenda for the night, they can’t actually discuss making changes, but they can set a date to discuss it in the future. So we decided to go to the meeting. My husband got all his notes together and we set out on our adventure. Here he is filling out the card before the meeting so they would know he wanted to address them.

After my husband said his piece and sat back down, the mayor said that they had gotten several emails about the chickens and that it seems to be a hot topic. He said he thinks it’s something that needs to be looked at, and the council set a time to discuss it. After the meeting, one of the council members motioned to talk to my husband. He chatted about chickens for a few minutes and told my husband that he grew up on a farm. We are hoping that he will push a revision to the chicken ordinance. All in all, the vibe we got from the meeting was positive. We’re crossing our fingers that we will soon have chickens of our own!